reading lawyer films
-a note on interpretative strategies-

james r. elkins

Remember your first efforts in reading law cases. For some, the reading is not out of the ordinary. You read the assigned cases, noting what happened, that two parties were involved in a dispute, that legal arguments were presented, and a judge decided that one party won and another lost. But you may have also learned, perhaps rudely (depending upon the teacher), that your reading of the cases was unsatisfactory. You learn (actually, it might be more accurate to say you were told) your reading was superficial and you missed many of the important points in the case. Learning this, you may have experienced the sinking feeling that you didn't know how to read a judicial opinion at all. Legal education begins with the most fundamental of enterprises--"reading" judicial opinions. Students who do it well succeed (some being highly acclaimed and later financially rewarded for their ability) and others learn the art of legal reading well enough to get by.

In Lawyers and Film, you're asked to read still a different kind of text -- a film. You may find that reading films, like reading judicial opinions, takes some readjustment. For others, reading film may prove less difficult than reading judicial opinions!

In Lawyers and Film, you need to give some thought to this matter of reading: How do I read films? How do I try to get beyond my first impression, my basic sense that the film was "good" or "bad"? What kind of strategies do I have for getting at the meaning of the film? Do films have meanings? And if they do have meaning(s), where does this meaning come from? What role do I play in the effort to give meaning to what I have seen and experienced in watching the film? How do some students of film get to be better than others in this business of meaning?

If film is a medium that calls for special theories of interpretation (available only by way of formal film study)(there is now an emerging discipline known as "film studies") both you the student and the instructor could be in trouble. I trust we are not in trouble (at least, deep trouble) based on the assumption that a lawyer film constitutes a kind of "text" and can be "read" like any literary text. I further assume that as a long-standing (and sometimes long suffering) student you have been asked during the course of your education to read hundreds of texts, of many different sorts (genres) and have developed the kind of meaning strategies that make it possible to comprehend and understand the texts you read. Some students are more agile and adept than others at putting their meaning strategies to work. Likewise, some are more curious and open about "texts" (and genres of texts) with which they have had no experience: newness is good, different is good, strange is good, mysterious is good. As you might expect, the student who knows how to read "texts," has the ability to effectively read various kinds of texts, is open and curious about unfamiliar texts, and can translate reading strategies and curiosity into prose is the better student. Note: Paradoxically, law school presents exactly the experience of newness and change in genre of textual form I refer to here, but then systematically and willfully ignores the rich literary possibilities in reading judicial opinions (and other legal texts). Faced with a new, rich, and imaginative body of new texts, the law student is asked to master the new genre as if nothing from his or her history of reading mattered in the new interpretative enterprise and that no future development of reading and writing (other than what law school teaches) will be required. Some students express disaffection with this basic (and erroneous assumption). Others accept it without giving it a second thought.

A Film is an Education. James Boyd White, a law professor who also teaches literature and the Greek classics, says, "I read for an education. . . ." [Milner S. Ball & James Boyd White, A Conversation Between Milner Ball and James Boyd White, 8 Yale. J. L. & Hum. 465, 476 (1996)]. What would it mean to watch a film for an education instead of entertainment and pleasure? If you want to do something useful with a film, you might ask: What kind of education does this film make possible? What kind of knowledge of lawyers, legal profession, and the world does the film offer? How does the film teach?

Where does the film fit what you now know about yourself and the  choices you've made in becoming a lawyer? How does this film  help you understand the assumptions you've made about the legal profession and your place in it?

A Film Tells a Story. You've been listening to stories, telling stories, and reading them from the time you were a child. You must know, already, a great deal about stories and how they work, how one story works better than another, and how some stories become revered as "classics." A film is, first and foremost, a story. If you know about stories and how they work, then put that knowledge to work in your reading of lawyer films.

Film Drama Emerges From Conflict. With lawyer films, we might "follow the conflict" the way prosecutors in white collar crime investigations "follow the money." (Politicians sometimes adopt essential messages framed in memorable phrases. Bill Clinton and his political handlers made famous this one: "It's the economy, stupid." One might say in reading film, "follow the conflict," or more poignantly, "it's the conflict, stupid.") What kind of conflict is presented in the film? How do film's characters "represent" the conflict? How is the conflict resolved?

There are some rather basic ways in which conflict is represented in film. For example, conflict between a protagonist and an enemy or antagonist. Note that the protagonist and antagonist are not only characters but the representation & personification of forces, movements, or world-views. These forces or powers that the characters represent may be resisted or embraced, so the struggle is both internal to the character and between the characters.

To further simplify the representation of conflict in film, we may portray it as play of the great opposites":

Lawyer films play with, and play off, the tensions between and within these "great opposites." You may find that a particular film genre, assuming lawyer films constitute a genre, specializes in particular, or stylized portrayals of the "great opposites," as for example, the legal trial as a dramatic portrayal of the forces of good and evil.

In many films the plot consists of little more than the crude opposition of the great forces and the result is flat, one-dimensional characters and a film without dramatic appeal. It seems it is easier to film the starkness of good and evil than it is film character with sufficient complexity and psychic resources that embrace and wrestle with goodness or evil. Films that emphasize plot and ignore character may be entertaining, but they actually tell us little about good and evil.

Finally, a student of lawyer films, must not only recognize the conflict, but interpret it. Consequently, the conflict presented in the film must be placed in perspective. There is the conflict in the film, but this conflict has an existence beyond the film, in our lives, and out in the world. But you do not need personal, direct experience of a particular conflict to see and understand how it works. If we needed such direct experience, we would have no anthropology, a severely truncated version of sociology, the most mechanistic sort of counseling and therapy profession, and the most minimal offerings in the way of novels and literature. A central tenet of education is that students are able to experience the world vicariously, which allows us to know and understand features of the world we do not experience directly.

Robert Scholes, in Textual Power (1985) argues that "binary oppositions . . . organize the flow of value and power. . . ." (4). "[L]aying bare of basic oppositions" is, according to Scholes, "becoming a basic part of the critic's repertory. . . ." (4). "In getting from the said and read to the unsaid and interpreted . . . [t]he first things to look for are repetitions and oppositions that emerge at the obvious or manifest level of the text." (32).

We can, with some effort, "try to uncover the implications of the opposition by exploring all the relationships of similarity and difference that link the story's" oppositions. (33). We

must ask what these oppositions ‘represent,' . . . what they ‘symbolize.' This aspect of interpretation involves connecting the singular oppositions of the text to the generalized oppositions that structure our cultural systems of values. In other words, we are talking about ideology. Considered in this light, interpretation is not a pure skill but a discipline deeply dependent upon knowledge. It is not so much a matter of generating meanings out of a text as it is a matter of making connections between a particular verbal text and a larger cultural text, which is the matrix or master code that the literary text both depends upon and modifies. In order to teach the interpretation of a literary text, we must be prepared to teach the cultural text as well. (33).

Scholes goes on to posit, in addition to the movement from reading to interpretation, a move from interpretation to criticism. Scholes says of this move: "It is a differentiation of the subjectivity of the critic from that of the author, an assertion of another textual power against that of the primary text." (40). "Criticism is ‘against' other texts insofar as it resists them in the name of the critic's recognition of her or his own values." (39).

Another name for the use of binary oppositions to "read" a text and criticize it is "deconstruction." One commentary begins deconstruction of the Constitution by defining deconstruction as "reading a text to elucidate its quarrels with itself, the contradictions and uncertainties suppressed beneath its superficial order." [John Leubsdorf, Deconstructing the Constitution, 40 Stan. L. Rev. 181 (1987)]

If drama and life are shaped by the struggle to understand and resolve oppositional forces, you may find it instructive to map the "oppositions" you find in the films. Both screen writers and narrative theorists argue that stories, drama in particular, are driven by conflict, and the fundamental tension that must be addressed by the story's protagonist (and by those who share the protagonist's world). What conflict or tension do you find at the heart of the story in these lawyer films?

We Learn Something by Way of Film in Our Caring for and Identification with the Characters in the Film. You might begin by focusing on your identification (positive and negative) with the central characters in the film. Entertained by plot, we are educated by the film's characters. What character in the film attracts your attention and your caring? How is this caring evoked, that is, how does it come about, what brings you to care what happens to a character in a film? What happens when you watch a film and realize you just don't care about any of the characters?

There is something odd, peculiar and wonderful about the knowledge we come to possess about film characters. We know what the character looks like, often enough where she lives, what kind of furniture she has in her bedroom, what kind of car she drives, her marital and family situation, where she works, who she works with, what kind of work she does, how she is regarded by her coworkers, her relationship with her boss, how the boss is regarded by the workers, and the various tensions and conflicts in her work.

We learn enough about film characters, at least when they are portrayed in anything other than one-dimensional fashion, to become involved in their lives. We begin to care about the film's characters, we want things to turn out well for a particular character (and less well for another), we want a character to get what he or she wants or needs or desires because of what we have learned about them and because we care. We want the characters with whom we identify to vanquish their foes and slay the dragon.

"Whether hero or anti-hero, if the movie is to succeed, the audience must find itself able to identify with the protagonist. How? The most compelling invitation to identify oneself with the screen character is offered when the protagonist is forced by the narrative to make hard choices and difficult decisions. This is the moment when the audience recalls the agony of minds we would rather not make up, and are generous with our sympathy for characters who cannot avoid doing so." [Suzanne Shale, The Conflicts of Law and the Character of Men: Writing Reversal of Fortune and Judgment at Nuremberg, 30 U.S.F.L. Rev. 991, 1001 (1996)]

Law Makes the Hero Possible. James Boyd White notes that "the activity of law is inherently idealizing. . . ." [Milner S. Ball & James Boyd White, A Conversation Between Milner Ball and James Boyd White, 8 Yale. J. L. & Hum. 465, 480 (1996)]. Might the same thing be said of the lawyer film genre? What kind of lawyer heroes do we find in lawyer films?

A Challenge to Meaning. A student in the "lawyers and literature" course noted that the lawyer literature he was reading for the course (novels and fictional short stories) were a "challenge to meaning." Might the same be said of lawyer films?

Most lawyer films are made by directors and actors who have no legal training, working with scripts written by authors who have no background in law. Is it possible that these "outsiders" have a view of law and lawyers that might challenge or threaten what we have come to accept and believe as "Insiders"?

More Interpretative Strategies

Look to the Film Itself for Clues on How It Can be Read. Learn to make use of what is in the film (memorable scenes, memorable dialogue, puzzling symbols, speeches presented as monologues). The key to remember is that "texts do, to some extent, give directions for their own decoding." [Peter J. Rabinowitz, Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation 37 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1987)]

To read and work with a film carefully and thoughtfully, it will help if you take notes when you watch the films (or plan to view the films a second time). When you take takes--which I recommend--try to capture some snippets of dialogue. Don't worry if you don't get every line of the dialogue. You will find these snippets of dialogue extremely helpful and, if artfully used, they will add immeasurably to your interpretative work on the film.

Film is, it may seem trite to observe, a medium unto itself. While film shares with literature certain features (narrative structure and methods for critical interpretation), there are technical elements to films and film-making that provide further information about the film and how it should be read. A student of Lawyers and Film can certainly manage to get through the course without resort to technical film terms and processes, but some of you may want to know more about the technical elements of films. Knowing more about the technical elements of film may make you a better film viewer and critic.

Look for Symbols. Films are full of symbols. You might want to learn to comment on them and make use of them. For example, in lawyer films, notice the camera shots of the courthouse. (Check these shots against photographs of the Taj Mahal.) Is the camera's angles and representation of the courthouse in lawyer films designed to portray the courthouse as a symbol? A symbol of what? To what use are symbols put in lawyer films?

[On the Nature of Symbols] [Chasing Shadows and Using Symbols]

Draw on Your Knowledge of Other Films. What other films (lawyer and non-lawyer) have you seen, enjoyed, admired, puzzled over, which might bear on your reading of the films selected for the course?

Can you imagine a course on lawyers and film in which no lawyer films are shown? What films might be used in such a course? If you were the teacher of such a course how would you defend yourself against the charge that you were perversely ignoring directly relevant films for those clearly less so?

The Reading Literature Analog. Use what you know about literature. Remember, you are still, in watching films, reading, and interpreting texts and these are activities in which you have long been engaged.

If the expression "reading film" seems odd to you, you might explore your reaction (as there is nothing sacred at all about the phrase). The point is really quite simple--you want to explore lawyer films and see what meaning can be derived from them.

Read Films Like Chapters of a Book. Remember that you are watching an entire "series" of films. What kind of world do you enter with the first film you watch in the course? (What does the film say about beginning?) Is it an appropriate introduction to the lawyer film genre (if such a genre exists)? How does the progression of films in the series work? In what sense can they be viewed as chapters in a larger text? How does one film Juxtaposed to another work? What common story-lines, plots, motifs, character types, symbols, myths do you find emerging in the films you are watching? [Film Genre]

When you finally watch all the films in the course and consider them as a whole, what can you say about them?

Keep an Eye on the Classroom Dialogue. Parker J. Palmer, in The Courage to Teach 104 (1998) observes that he knows of "no field, from science to religion, where what we regard as objective knowledge did not emerge from long and complex communal discourse that continues to this day, no field where the facts of the matter were delivered fully formed from on high."

We do far more rigorous work in the classroom when we discuss films than one might imagine. We may devise, in our work together, ways of talking about, interpreting, and understanding films that provide themes you can explore in your own interpretive work. What are we doing in our discussion of this film? In our discussion of how to read lawyer films?

What Do Film Studies Students Do. There is a growing and vibrant field of academic study called "film studies." You might want to see what the "film studies" folks are doing and whether they are devising strategies for reading films that you might put to use. [See Film Studies on the Links page]

Peruse Film Journals (Academia and Popular). There are numerous journals devoted to film and film criticism, and it might be interesting to peruse issues of these journals for the sole purpose of getting an idea what the nature of contemporary literature on film. Do these journals provide any help in understanding what we are doing? Compare what you find in these journals with what we are trying to do in the course. What do the journals have to offer that might help you understand lawyer films? [Journals Online and Off]

Explore Websites Devoted to Film. For students of lawyer films, one place to begin might be the archives of Picturing Justice: On-Line Journal of Law and Popular Culture (this attractive website is now inactive).

Film and Meaning

Favorite Film Choices: Influences of the Beholder and the Beheld

Reading Film & the Social Sciences

How to Read a Film
[Read-only Adobe.pdf files of James Monaco's How to Read a Film
(New York: Oxford University Press, 3rd ed., 1999)]

Ways of Watching Film

Delirious Enchantment

What Are They Writing About?

Film Criticism
Wikipedia

A Critique of Hollywood Films (and by implication lawyer films)

Ray Carney on the Best Movies You've Never Heard Of

The Difference between Fake and Real Emotions in Life and Art

Reading Literature as a Way of Thinking About Lawyer Films

Depth, Complexity, Quality

Critical Reading: A Guide

On the Uses of Studying Literature

The Myth of Easy Reading

Identification with Film Characters

Viewer 'Identification' with Characters in Television and Film Fiction

Technical Aspects of Film

Reading a Film Sequence

Reading What We Do in the Classroom When We Talk About Lawyer Films

Skills For Living Together Tools for Better Understanding Yourself and Others in Your Community